4 ms·

> Could a governor outsource specific depts and free them from 1st amendment concerns? At face-value it seems so, which is scary.

• dopylitty 7y ago
  And how about other amendments? It's very scary if the court is arguing that the government can hire a private company to provide a service or perform a task and that private company is not bound by the constitutional responsibilities that the government would've been bound by had it provided the same service or performed the same task.
• howard941 7y ago
  Can't avoid taking it at face value - the city outsourced its public channel to a private operator which was enough to lead five Justices on another trip down the garden path to fencing limits on government to government actors in an orthodox sense. These 5-4 splits are scary and dangerous.
  • gwright 7y ago
    I think this situation is somewhat different from your characterization. It isn't really a "public channel" that somehow belongs to the city/state. It is privately provided service that is just mandated as a side-effect of granting the private company a cable franchise. But I'm struggling to come up with a good analogy that involves private infrastructure that exists only due to government action with a 1st-amendment component.
• Proven 7y ago
  Why is it scary? A governor can't do anything - it is the U.S. Constitution that preserves natural rights and prevents a governor from preventing the citizens from exercising those rights. If a governor had the ability to restrict constitutional rights, now that would be scary.